Print

xvii Foreword I admit it that I’m a total government documents nerd. While others are soaking up the latest from Neil Gaiman or rereading Pride and Prejudice for the 20th time, I like nothing better than curling up with a good book born of a deep dive into government documents. The footnotes are just as intriguing as the text, for it is in them that I discover the documents and records that form the basis of the world that we government information librarians know and love. Chris Brown’s new text demonstrates that he is a government docu- ments nerd par excellence. I’ve been a government documents librarian for 20 years, and like Chris, I teach a class on the subject for the Library and Information Science Program at my university. Reading Mastering United States Government Information: Sources and Services put me on notice that, geek though I may be, there is still a great deal that I don’t know about federal government information. If one needs proof of the value of librarians, it can be found here. Chris previously demonstrated his own mastery of using search engines in his book Harnessing the Power of Google: What Every Researcher Should Know. Now, he shows us how to apply those strategies to locate government information. But the book doesn’t stop there. Mastering doesn’t just tell you the what it also explains the why of how government information is organized and made available so the reader can develop a conceptual understanding of the structures and flows of government information. Chris’s long experience as a government documents librarian shows through his intricate explication of the arcane world of the federal govern- ment, from regulations and laws to patents and data. He combines a wide variety of source material with his own research findings. Government information changes so rapidly that one cannot hope to adequately describe how to find it using mere lists of resources. Chris knows this and has responded by emphasizing concepts, strategies, and tools.